The BOUS Problem
by Wyndes
Summary: Giant robot bats are invading Eureka. If you are a Jo/Zane shipper, Chapter 12 is for you. If you're not, you should probably stop at 11. Um, or maybe 10.
1. Chapter 1

Title: The B.O.U.S. Problem

Disclaimer: Not my characters, of course. Also, it's entirely possible that I will randomly borrow quotes from previous episodes of the show without crediting them.

_A/N: This takes place after two other fan fics, _Better Late Than Never_ and _An Australian Werewolf in Eureka_. If you haven't read them, the shortest possible summary is that Zane knows about the alternate universe thing and he and Jo are again a couple, although in the pretty early stages. But this might be more fun if you read those first. _

**Scene 1**

"I can't believe I'm letting you do this," Jo shook her head.

"In fact," said Zane, grinning up at her, "you're helping me." He plucked the sonic screwdriver she was holding out of her hand, and bent back to the lock he was working on.

"I'm not helping," she protested automatically. "I disapprove of this." She turned and looked out into the dark forest surrounding them. It was a beautiful, crystal-clear night, the air chilly with a hint of frost, but all was still and quiet.

"You held the screwdriver." Zane stood, and with a flourish, pushed open the door and gestured for her to precede him. "I'm pretty sure that makes you an accomplice."

"Criminal trespass, breaking and entering, vandalism for the broken lock…" Jo's words were gloomy, but she went ahead and entered the Eureka observatory ahead of Zane. He reached down and grabbed the picnic that Vincent had prepared for them from the ground where it had been sitting and followed her in.

"It's not broken, just opened," he protested. "And eh, don't worry. You're a first-time offender. If we get caught, you'll get off with probation."

"And I'll lose my job!" He flipped on the lights. "Zane!" she protested. "Are you trying to get us caught?"

"I didn't bring a flashlight. And it'd be pretty tough to do this in the dark." With a press of a button, the domed roof of the observatory began to slide open. "Set up the picnic," he suggested, crossing to the controls of the giant telescope and beginning to type.

"Wait, what are you doing?"

"Turning the scope to the Iris Nebula," he said absently, focused on the numbers he was copying to the terminal.

"I thought everything seen through the telescope was recorded?" Jo hadn't moved from where she stood by the door.

"Uh, yeah. But I pulled the plug on the transmission. Someone will notice in the morning and come plug it in again."

Jo frowned, eying him thoughtfully. In his black leather jacket with his shock of dark hair, he looked like the quintessential rebel, the ultimate bad boy. But that? What he'd just said? That didn't make sense.

He turned away from the controls and grinned at her, and without hesitation, she smiled back at him. "So what's in our picnic?" she asked, moving into the observatory

"I asked Vincent for your favorites, and he vetoed that for a picnic. Apparently, Vinspresso, ouzo, and smoothies are not acceptable picnic food."

"Smoothies are healthy," Jo protested mildly.

"And boring." Opening the bag he still carried, Zane pulled out a small square of cloth. Shaking it out, once, twice, three, four times, it seemingly magically turned into a picnic-sized blanket.

"Nice," Jo said admiringly.

He took a little bow. "Not mine, actually," he acknowledged. "That consumer products lab has been working on it. I think it's still a little erratic in how it opens up. But that worked fine."

"It's not going to bite us, is it?" Jo looked at it skeptically. A super-expanding blanket was one thing: an experimental GD project was something else entirely.

"No, no. I think they just have sizing difficulties with it. It'll be fine."

"So what do we have to eat?" Jo sat down on the blanket, and smiled up at him. A flicker of doubt crossed his face, and then he sat down next to her, and proceeded to start pulling things out of Vincent's bag and spreading them on the blanket.

"Bread, of course, is required. Three kinds of cheese. Grapes and strawberries. Olives stuffed with blue cheese, and toasted peanut butter with bacon—I think Vincent was thinking of me on those. And ice cream for dessert."

"Rocky Road?" asked Jo.

"Is there any other kind?"

"I'm partial to butter pecan, myself."

"Really?" Zane looked horrified and then tried to quickly wipe his expression away, as if he was actually tolerant of other people's taste in ice cream.

Jo laughed. Just looking at the expression on his face made her start to giggle, and then giggle harder and harder until she had to lie back on the blanket to laugh.

"All right, what is so funny about that?" asked Zane, exasperated.

"Nothing," said Jo, rolling to her side to gaze at him. "Just…" she shook her head and looked down. "You're not so different, you know," she said almost shyly.

"Ah." Zane slid down on the blanket, so that he was lying next to her. With one hand, he reached up and pulled out her hair band, so that her long dark hair fell around them. "So my virtuous alter ego also prefers Rocky Road?"

"He's not…you're not…"Jo started to automatically defend her Zane from a charge that felt like an insult, and then paused. "Virtuous? Do you honestly think that there's a universe in which you're virtuous?"

"Good answer," murmured Zane, and leaning in, took her lips. She kissed him back, sliding her hand up across his cheek and into his hair and holding him to her. Her mouth fell open under his and their tongues danced, flickering, tangling, weaving together, until she murmured, breathless, "Dinner?"

He pulled back and laughed, a little breathless. "Hungry?"

"Um, yeah," she admitted. "Although I suppose I could be distracted for a while, but…what the hell?" She fell back against the blanket. A giant black something had just flown across the open roof. "What was that?"

"What was what?" asked Zane, looking up at the starry night. The blackness outside their circle of light was absolute, the stars distant glitters of cold white.

"That—that—there was a thing. In the sky!"

"Uh, what kind of a thing?" Zane looked skeptical.

"I…I don't know," said Jo, staring at the sky. She scrambled to her feet, and automatically, almost without thinking, brushed one hand against the small of her back and the other against her right ankle. Yep, she had her guns.

"Damn it, when did you figure it out?'

"What?" said Jo, glancing at him for a quick second before returning her gaze to the sky, adrenaline still pumping.

"That we weren't breaking in," he said, disgust in his voice.

"Oh, that," she said, glancing at him again, amused. "Criminal trespass, and breaking and entering, sure thing. Messing with another scientist's data, no way. Somebody asked you to come change the scope settings."

"I hate being obvious," he complained.

"That's not the word I'd use to describe you," Jo was scanning the sky, trying to find the thing that she'd just seen. In some calm, abstract part of her mind, she was aware that it was incredibly beautiful. They were high on the hills above Eureka, far enough out of the pollution light of the town that the blackness and the stars were almost infinite. But still, some dark kite-like thing had just slid across the sky and she was riding an adrenaline high.

"Well, you can quit pretending you've seen something weird. It was a good try at getting me back for pretending we were breaking in."

"Not kidding," she said. "I was looking forward to you seducing me out of my anxiety about committing criminal acts. I'm sure it would have been very fun. But the thing I just saw was real."


	2. Chapter 2

**Scene 2**

"Um, okay," Zane stood up, watching the sky. They stood there for a bit, and it started to feel to Jo as if time had slowed to some molasses-like experience.

"I promise," she said, quietly, staring at the sky. "There was something there that was not normal."

"Could you tell whether it went it front of the scope?" Zane asked her, eyes scanning the skies.

"Yeah, I think it did," she said, shooting him a quick glance.

"It's been recorded, then. We can check the footage to see what it was."

Jo felt a rush of warmth for him. He hadn't dismissed her apprehension. He hadn't said, "Oh, it was probably nothing" or tried to find some logical answer that made her response an overreaction. He was taking her seriously. And that was nice, but also a little weird.

Even weirder, though, was how she was feeling. Her adrenaline hadn't faded—if anything it was getting worse. Her heart was beating so quickly and so loudly that she could almost hear it in her ears. Her stomach was knotting up, as if something horrible was about to happen.

She licked her lips, and then reached back and touched her gun again for the reassurance. She glanced over at Zane. He was still staring at the sky, his breath a little too fast, a little too shallow.

She reached out to him and put her hand on his arm, clenching it tight. "Are you scared?"

"No," he answered automatically, defensively. "Of course not."

"No, really," she insisted, shaking his arm a little. "Are you scared?"

He looked at her, puzzled. "I—yes, maybe?"

"When's the last time you got scared?" she asked, turning to put her back to his and scanning the room slowly. The doorway was dark, but with the lights on, she could tell that there was no one else in the room. There was nothing here. Nothing to be scared of.

"Uh…" There was a long pause.

Jo thought back over all the times she and Zane-either Zane-could have, maybe should have been afraid. He'd been attacked by a wolf, and shrugged it off. Mansfield sending him back to prison-he'd acted like he didn't care. There'd been the bariogenic radiation poisoning when the whole town might die of old age-he was just excited to set off a nuclear weapon. And that time with the second sun, when he truly did act like driving headlong into a fiery death was everyone's idea of a good time. "Yeah, that's what I thought. Never, right?"

"I'm sure I've been scared. I don't exactly like being arrested. Although I don't much mind when you do it," he shot her a quick grin, then returned his gaze to the night sky.

"Yeah, not the same thing. I'm not talking rational awareness of something unpleasant in your future, I'm talking…this. Whatever's happening right now."

"You think something's causing the way we feel?" He was still watching overhead, and Jo took a quick glance up herself before starting her slow scan of the room again.

"I don't know but I really want to get a look at whatever that thing was that flew by."

"What did it look like?"

"Like…I don't know. It was just a big black shadow. It went by really quickly."

"Mechanical or biological?"

"How would you feel about supernatural?" Jo's heart was starting to slow down, her sense of anxiety easing.

"Seriously, there's no such thing."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Only dumb people believe in something beyond tachyons and particle accelerators." The feeling was almost gone now, and Jo was starting to feel foolish. Had she really felt what she thought she'd felt?

"Well, I suppose it could be a Reaper. You did mess with the time-line after all," Zane said cheerfully, turning to face her.

"A what?" Jo looked lost. Zane had pulled her hair band out earlier, so her long hair was flowing down her shoulders. With that, her casual clothes, and her confused expression, she looked more like a teenager than the serious security professional she was.

"You know. Dr. Who? Those big creepy flying monsters that eat people in that episode where Rose saves her father? They're like some kind of weird bacteria that are trying to heal the time-line by destroying everyone associated with the paradox." Zane was trying to keep a straight face, but Jo could tell by the mischievous glint in his eye that he was teasing her.

"Oh, you…" Shaking her head at him, she grabbed a handful of his t-shirt and twisted, pulling him toward her, and then reaching up and taking his mouth. He was smiling and the kiss was at first light, but it quickly deepened. With a murmur deep in her throat, Jo let go of her grip on the front of his shirt, and let her hands slide up, over his broad shoulders, before pulling away. "That's not possible, right?"

"No, it's not possible," Zane laughed. "It's just a television show. Although…" he shrugged, seeming to consider the possibility. "Well, time travel is theoretically impossible, too. But no. No, no, definitely not. There's no way…" he glanced up at the ceiling again.

"So…picnic or back to GD to look at the telescope recordings?" Jo asked.

Zane considered the question, looking from the picnic foods spread out on the floor to the open dome. "You're positive you saw something?"

Jo nodded. "Yes, I definitely saw something. And I think it did something to us. You were breathing too fast, my heart was racing, that wasn't natural…"

"Breathing fast around you, Jo-jo, is totally natural." Zane murmured, brushing another kiss against her lips. But then he straightened and sighed. "Yeah, it was a weird feeling. There was something going on there. All right, back to GD it is. But we can't tell Vincent. He'd be so bummed to know that we wasted his picnic."


	3. Chapter 3

**Scene 3**

Back at GD, Jo perched on the edge of a desk and ate grapes while she watched Zane work. Tonight had been their first real date, and this wasn't how she'd wanted it to go. Between his slow recovery from the werewolf virus and her lack of privacy while living at S.A.R.A.H., they'd been limited in their opportunities to be together.

Neither of those things would have mattered in the old timeline, of course. If Zane had been sick, she would have been staying at his apartment to take care of him. In fact, with her house gone, she probably would have been living at his apartment, while they planned their wedding and a new house together. But this wasn't that timeline and he wasn't that Zane.

"Oh, hell." Zane leaned back in his char. Jo looked at him quizzically. "They were doing long-term exposures—we won't be able to see anything. Best-case would be a blur on a single image. I should have thought of that before."

Jo frowned. "What about other cameras? Are there any security cameras on the observatory that might have caught something?"

Zane shrugged and leaned forward. "Maybe," he said as he started to type.

"None of that," Jo reached out and gently slapped the back of his nearest hand. "Let me do it."

He grinned at her. "I suppose it could be considered bad manners to hack the feeds of the security cameras in front of the head of security." He pushed back from the desk and waved her permission to take over.

"Bad manners would be one way to put it," she said tartly, as she slid into a chair and pulled it over to the keyboard. She typed in her password and entered the database of Global Dynamic security cameras, scrolling down the lengthy list, looking for cameras that might be at or have a view of the observatory.

"Wow, that's…" Zane started to say something and then looked away. She glanced at him.

"What?"

"Sorry, hacker instinct," he shook his head. "I couldn't help seeing you type your password. I just realized what…well, it's familiar." he shrugged.

Jo glanced at the keyboard and thought back, and then flushed. Her password alternated numbers and letters, the numbers and letters of Zane's name and birthday. Studiously not looking at him, she went back to the list of cameras before finally saying, "Does it bother you?"

"Does what bother me?"

"That—that we're out of sync. That my feelings are maybe a lot more intense than yours. I mean, I know you want me but for you, this is a first date and for me…" she paused. "This is hard to talk about, sorry. Wrong time and place. Never mind." She shook her head and bent back to the keyboard.

Zane tugged at the arm of her chair, turning it so that she was forced to face him. Eyes dark, he said seriously, "It really bugs me that you're in love with someone else. I really hate that, actually."

"But—," she started to protest automatically, and then paused. "Fair point. " She wasn't sure she wanted to say the words that were hovering on the tip of her tongue, but she let them out anyway. "Is this just too complicated?" She bit her lip.

Zane's gaze dropped to her mouth, to where her teeth were worrying the soft skin, and he closed his eyes as if in pain. "No," he said firmly, pulling her up and out of her chair and into his arms. The next minutes were lost in a haze of sensation, only finally broken by the ringing of her phone.

He pulled back. "Is it a bad sign that your phone is playing 'Trouble'?"

"Um," she tried to pull herself together. "It's Fargo."

"Oh, yeah, definitely a bad sign." With a sigh, he let her go so that she could answer it.

She pulled the phone out, and answered. "What's up, Fargo?" She was still a little breathless, but Fargo didn't comment, too focused on the reason for his call to notice.

"Hey, Jo, I'm sorry to interrupt your Saturday night. But Carter just called: he's been getting reports of some weird flying creatures over Eureka and he wanted to know what they could be. I'm pretty sure it must be the B.O.U.S. project, but they shouldn't be out. Any chance you can meet Carter at Dr. Kwon's house and find out what's happened?

"The B.O.U.S. project?" repeated Jo, distracted. Zane was watching her, and she couldn't concentrate for the heat in his eyes. Every inch of her skin felt sensitized, every molecule was yearning toward him. She wanted to be back in his arms. Better yet, she wanted to be out of GD and back at the observatory and in his arms under the starry sky. "Oh, wait, what?" she said, Fargo's words finally sinking in.

"The B.O.U.S. project is top-secret. Dr. Kwon shouldn't be testing them without strict protocols in place."

"What is the B.O.U.S. project, Fargo? Any chance they're big black shadowy creatures capable of flying around in the dark? Oh, and with some kind of psychological weapon that attacks anyone who comes within range?"

Zane's eyebrows shot up and he grinned.

"Uh-oh," Fargo replied. "That sounds like you've seen them, too. But they shouldn't have any weapons. They're a DoD reconnaissance program. Camouflaged drones."

"Camouflaged?" Jo was skeptical. "Camouflaged as what? It didn't look like anything I'd ever seen before."

"They're just bats."

"Bats?" Jo repeated. "There's no way the thing I saw was a bat, Fargo. It was way too big for that."

"They're bats of unusual size."

Jo rolled her eyes. "Bats? Bats of Unusual Size? Really? Whose idea was that?"

"No idea," said Fargo, cheerfully. "But I love it, so probably mine. Anyway, can you go check it out?"

Jo sighed. She was getting the feeling that this first date, if that's what it should be called, wasn't going to end well. "All right, Fargo. I'll head to Dr. Kwon's." She hung up and looked over at Zane. "Want to go check out some bats?"

He grinned at her. "Well, I'd rather continue where we left off, but bats might be fun."


	4. Chapter 4

**Scene 4**

"Bats," said Jo, gloomily.

"Ah, cheer up," said Carter. "At least they're not vampire bats."

"Any reason to believe they couldn't be vampires?" asked Zane cheerfully.

Both Carter and Jo glared at him. "You really had to bring him?" Carter said in an aside to Jo. She turned her glare onto him.

Kwon's house had been still and quiet. Jo and Zane had met up with Carter at the front door, but there'd been no answer to their knock. They'd walked around to the back of the house and found a barn—a ramshackle, falling-down, decrepit barn that looked perfectly haunted. If it had been Halloween, it would have made a lovely haunted house. But it wasn't Halloween.

"I've been really good about not drawing my weapon tonight," said Jo, plaintively. "Any objections if I just pull it out and hang on to it right now?"

"Aw, come on, Jo. We're just…walking into a barn," said Carter.

"I can't say I like this barn, Carter."

"I'll hold your hand, Jo-jo," whispered Zane. Jo returned her glare to him. He smirked at her and held out his hand. She narrowed her eyes at him and pulled out her gun.

"How about I go first?" she asked Carter.

"Whoa, these bats really spooked you," said Carter, spotting the gun, and stepping back.

"You haven't seen them, so yeah, how about I be the paranoid one right now?" Jo pushed in front of Carter, and kicked open the door to the barn, immediately following it with the standard police issue swivel from side to side. Of course it was pitch dark, because it was night and the barn wasn't lit. But still…better safe than sorry.

"Nothing." She shook her head and stepped carefully into the darkness inside the barn.

"Was it that creepy?" Carter asked Zane, sotto voce.

"I didn't really see it," he answered, honestly. "But yeah, it was definitely weird. Something strange was happening."

Carter shrugged, and then pulled his own gun. He followed Jo into the barn, immediately stepping to one side of the door and doing his own quick scan for danger.

"Do you smell that?" Jo asked.

"Crispy critter?" said Carter.

"That's what it smells like to me."

"That's not good."

"Nope."

Suddenly, a bright light flared to life, illuminating the entire barn. Both Carter and Jo turned to glare at Zane, who was standing next to the light switch. He shrugged.

Jo walked forward. "Clear," she called back, with a sigh, sliding her gun back into its holster at her back.

Carter and Zane joined her, looking down at the black ashy pile in front of her. "Kwon, you think?" asked Carter.

"We'll have to get a DNA profile." Jo poked the pile with her toe, and it crumbled a bit more into a pile of ash. "If there's enough left that we can."

"Check that out," she nodded toward the back wall of the barn. It was basically demolished, but not from the ground. It was as if something had smashed through it at about mid-level, leaving stubs of boards reaching up from the ground and more stubs reaching down from the ceiling. But the gap was big, far too big for a bat of any size—unless unusually large meant truly gigantic.

"Huh," said Zane, "This is odd." He wasn't looking at the wall, but at the debris on the ground.

"What's that?" asked Carter.

"Broken glass. Melted glass, in fact."

"Well, it's a lab, isn't it?" asked Jo.

"Yeah, but…if he was working on bats, and they were actually drones, he should have been a robotics expert. Anything in here should be metal or circuitry or plastics or at most something he'd use for the surface of the bats. A robotics lab shouldn't have glass in it." Zane crouched next to the debris and poked at it. Tentatively, he picked up a piece of glass and sniffed it.

"Anything?" asked Carter.

"Nope." Zane grinned up at Carter. "I'm not Andy, sorry. But you might want to get him out here and run some tests. It'd be interesting to know what chemicals were involved."

Carter sighed. "He's on a date."

"A date?" Jo couldn't help feeling annoyed. She'd been on a date, too, damn it, and she was here. Andy was a robot. And S.A.R.A.H. was a house! How far could they go?

"S.A.R.A.H. took him for a ride up the coast in the smart car. I believe they're at a beach somewhere, a few hours from here."

Jo rolled her eyes. "He's smarter than I give him credit for."

Zane chuckled and stood. "Well, you could collect the pieces and bring them back to GD. We could test them there. But it'd be…" his voice trailed off as he looked at the wall, thoughtfully.

"What is it?" asked Jo.

He shook his head, but didn't otherwise answer. He was frowning. Suddenly he crouched again and began sorting through the debris.

"So, we've got a dead body. An explosion of some kind. And a bunch of missing bats," said Carter.

"That sounds about right," said Jo. "What do you think?"

Zane stood abruptly and began exploring the undamaged areas of the barn.

"I think…I have no idea." Carter shook his head.

Jo bit back a smile. "In that case," she said dryly, "where are we going to start?"

Carter scratched the back of his neck. "We should probably collect…uh, Kwon. And then see if we can figure out how to get the bats back. I'll call Henry for the uh, coroner duties. And then we can talk bats." He shook his head. "Bats," he repeated, as if the concept was too strange to absorb.

"Hey," said Zane abruptly, returning to where Jo and Carter stood. He was looking abstracted, as if his brain was already elsewhere. "I've got to go. I'll catch you later, okay?" He dropped a kiss on Jo's cheek.

Jo's mouth opened, as if she was going to say something, but before she had a chance, he'd turned and gone, as quickly as if a bat was chasing him.

Jo closed her mouth with a snap. "Ooo…kay," she sighed.

Carter patted her shoulder sympathetically. "Not going too well?" he asked tentatively.

"Girl talk?" she asked him skeptically, and then shrugged. "I don't know." She sighed, looking at the door where Zane had disappeared. "Maybe this is just too hard."

"Henry and Grace have figured it out," Carter offered.

"They were married," Jo pointed out. "That's different."

"He's still the same guy," Carter said. "And you're still the same you."

"He's not, though. I mean, he is, but…he's different. We're different." Jo frowned, trying to put her finger on what the difference was.

"Deep down you're the same," Carter insisted.

"Maybe," said Jo, thoughtfully. "But maybe that means we're the same in exactly the same not quite right way."

Carter looked worried, but said nothing more. Jo sighed, and said firmly, "Enough girl talk. Call Henry and let's get this investigation going."


	5. Chapter 5

Scene 5

"All right, Fargo, what's the deal with the darn bats?" Jo was tired and a little bit cranky. Even a piping hot Vinspresso wasn't helping her mood.

After she and Carter had helped Henry remove the remains, they'd called Fargo and arranged to meet him first thing in the morning at Café Diem to discuss their next steps. Jo was trying to be a responsible grown-up about the whole thing, but this was not how she had planned to be spending her Sunday morning. From the moment she'd woken up in her bed—not the bed she'd planned to be waking up in—she'd been fighting the urge to whine.

"Shhh," Fargo hushed her urgently. "They're top secret. We shouldn't be talking about them here. "

Jo rolled her eyes. "Half the town called about them last night, Fargo," Carter said gently. "They might have been top-secret once, but they're not anymore."

Fargo sighed. "General Mansfield is not going to like this."

"He's not going to like the charred corpse or the big hole in the wall of a home lab, either," Carter pointed out.

Fargo shook his head. He was scrolling through the project files on his tablet. "It makes no sense," he said. "They're reconnaissance drones. No explosives, no weapons. They're just big bats that fly around and take pictures of scenery."

"There's got to be more to them that," Carter took a sip of his coffee.

"They must have some kind of weapons on them," Jo insisted. "Some kind of a gas or a drug. There was something about them that was…scary. "

"Couldn't you have imagined that?" Fargo asked. "I mean it was dark and…" Jo just looked at him and he let the words trail off.

"Um, okay, so weird bat psychic powers. And explosions. But there's nothing about either of those things in the project files."

"Was anyone else working with Kwon on this?" asked Carter. "Did he have a team?"

Fargo tapped his tablet a few times. "No, not at the moment. Although Taggart actually started the project, so maybe he'll know something."

"Wait, didn't Taggart's project use geese? But those were weapons—I distinctly remember Taggart saying something about the first rule of warfare being to control the high ground."

"Yes, yes, but this was an evolution of the project. Those geese were too expensive and they kept getting lost." Fargo shook his head, still reading intently. "The specs for the bat project were to develop an observational system that worked in darkness without relying on heat signatures for mapping." He shrugged. "It's not a weapon, and there's nothing here that should have caused an explosion."

"What does it say about how to get them back?" Jo asked. "Do they come home on their own when they're done taking pictures?"

"Ooh, good question." Fargo looked excited. "If they just need a homing signal or something, maybe we can get them back before I have to tell Mansfield that they're gone." He skimmed through the file and then shook his head regretfully. "Nothing about it here. We'll have to find Kwon's notes. Did you see a laptop in his barn?"

Jo looked at Carter questioningly and he shook his head. "Me, neither," she said. "But that explosion was pretty destructive. If he was working on his computer at the time, I'm not sure there'd be much left."

"Well, he must have had some way of getting the bats to come back. Maybe they're on timers, and will return to the barn automatically?" Fargo suggested hopefully. "It's not as if they're real animals that have escaped. They're just robots."

"Creepy robots," Jo muttered under her breath.

"Would he ever have tested them, though?" asked Carter. "I mean I assume the reason for the big barn was so that they could fly around in that space. If they were top secret, would he have let them out on longer flights yet?"

Fargo's mouth twisted. "Good point. No, he shouldn't have. They weren't scheduled for an active flight test for..." he scrolled through the file, "...another two months. "

"So why haven't they just kept flying and flown away?" asked Jo.

"It's probably the electromagnetic umbrella over the town. They can't get through it."

"Oooh, are they dumb enough to try? Maybe there's a pile of dead bats at the border of Eureka?" Jo liked that thought. It was perhaps unfair of her to be blaming the giant robot bats for the destruction of her evening, but she couldn't help thinking about that very pleasant picnic that had gone completely to waste.

"No, no, no," said Fargo adamantly. "That's a terrible idea. We don't want dead bats, we want captured bats."

"What difference does it make? They're not really alive. They'd just be zapped."

"This is a multi-million dollar project, and if the circuitry in the bats is fried, it could cost almost that much to try to fix them. No, we want to take these bats alive."

Jo sighed. The only thing she'd had to look forward to in her day was the possibility of shooting some bats, and now Fargo had stolen even that away from her. Whining was becoming more and more inevitable. She stared glumly into her Vinspresso.

"All right, so we've got some goals," Carter said. "I already sent Andy out to the barn to run some tests on the chemicals and see what Kwon was messing with out there. It's possible that the explosion isn't connected to the bats at all. We also need to find Kwon's computer, and see what his system was for retrieving the bats. And then we need to find Taggart and…ah, nice timing."

Jo looked up. Taggart had just come through the door of Café Diem. With Emily Glenn. She was smiling and he was laughing and it was immediately apparent that this was Saturday night continuing with Sunday breakfast, not a chance meeting or even a planned Sunday brunch. Jo looked away.

She wasn't jealous. She wasn't. Not of Taggart. But maybe, she admitted to herself, maybe of that first night romantic flush. Things with Zane just felt so complicated. Well, not to mention that she still hadn't gotten that first night romantic flush.

"You okay?" Carter asked her quietly.

"Yeah," she said, surprised ."Yeah, no, I'm fine. It's just…stop me before I start to whine." She pasted a smile on her face. How embarrassing to be caught moping.


	6. Chapter 6

**Scene 6**

"Taggart," Carter waved him over to where they were sitting. Emily followed, looking a little uncomfortable.

"Sorry to interrupt your breakfast," Carter apologized to her, "but we've got a bat problem that we're hoping Taggart can help with."

"Bats?" asked Taggart. "Can't say I know much about bats."

"It's the B.O.U.S. project, the one Kwon was running after your geese drones were discontinued," Fargo explained.

"Ah, the reconnaissance drones!" Taggart pulled out a chair for Emily and then dropped into one of his own, bending forward eagerly. "That was a great project. I was sorry to see it end. So when Kwon took it over, he started developing bats? That'd be good for night-time work."

"Bats would make great spies," Emily said thoughtfully.

"Why is that?" asked Carter.

"They're found world-wide. Bats are almost everywhere, so they'd never be noticeable. A Canadian goose would attract rather a lot of attention in say, China or North Korea. Bats…" she shrugged. "There are probably at least a dozen species native to North Korea, and China's got even more than that. A good bat drone could pass unnoticed."

"These bats are pretty noticeable," Jo said. "I mean apart from the part where they blew up a barn, they've got some sort of psychological weapon thing happening."

Taggart and Emily looked interested, but Fargo looked unconvinced and Jo narrowed her eyes at him. "I'm serious," she insisted. "I barely saw the thing and it was…my heart was racing, I was ready to fight. There was no reason for me to feel like that."

"Hmm, I wonder if Dr. Kwon was experimenting with frequencies," Emily said peacefully.

"Frequencies? What do you mean?" As always, Carter was first to ask the question.

"Well, if he made the drones bats, he was probably using echolocation for his mapping, right?"

"Sure," said Taggart, enthusiastically. "Sound maps, excellent idea."

Fargo nodded. "Yes, that's right. The bats use sound instead of light or heat to generate images."

"How does that work?" asked Carter.

Fargo shrugged. "It's like sonar. You send the sound wave out, and when it comes back, you can learn all kinds of information about what it hit on its way. Sound waves are slow so we mostly use sonar underwater, because in the air, radio waves are more efficient. Radar, in other words. But radar is detectable, and it can be jammed. As an unnoticeable way of mapping something in the dark, sound is efficient."

"Couldn't we hear it, though?" Carter asked.

All the scientists at the table shook their heads.

"No point in making a bat spy drone that you could hear," said Fargo.

"It'd use frequencies outside of the range of human hearing," Taggart added. "Just like real bats."

"Well, maybe not just like real bats," Emily added. "Real bats use high-frequencies. If these drone bats were using infrasound instead, it might feel…well, scary."

"Ooh, cool," Fargo looked enthusiastic.

"What does that mean?" asked Jo.

"Infrasonic sound is really low frequency sound. It's still outside the range of human hearing, but it induces feelings of nervousness and anxiety in human beings," Emily explained patiently. "Some people describe it as causing chills down the back of the spine, that kind of thing."

"Mystery solved," said Jo, triumphantly. "Now we just have to figure out how to catch the bats."

"Bat catching, eh? You know, I've caught a lot of animals in my time, but I can't say as I've ever tried to hunt bats. Not too many bats in the Arctic." Taggart scratched his chin, looking thoughtful.

"Well, there's also that small matter of the explosion and the dead scientist," Carter pointed out.

"Right," Jo nodded. "But maybe the explosion doesn't have anything to do with the bats. If Dr. Kwon was experimenting with frequencies, maybe he was experimenting with other things as well. Let's call Andy and see if he's found any interesting chemical traces in the wreckage." She pulled out her phone and dialed as Carter and Taggart and Emily started discussing ways to capture bats.

The phone rang. And rang. And rang.

Jo hung up with a frown. "No answer," she said.

"No answer?" Carter looked surprised. He pulled out his own phone and pressed a button. A minute later, he hung up, frowning.

"He should be out at the barn," Carter said thoughtfully. "Maybe we should head out there."

Jo nodded. "Let me get a refill on my coffee. Anyone else?"

"We'll order breakfast in a bit," Taggart answered, looking at Emily. She smiled and shook her head no at Jo, as did Carter.

"I'm good," Fargo waved her off.

Jo stood and crossed to the counter. Leaning on it, she waited for Vincent to finish what he was doing.

The bell on the door jingled and she glanced over to see who was coming in. It was Zane. He looked disheveled, distracted and disarmingly attractive, and her mouth curved in a welcoming smile. When he was out of her sight, she could feel stressed and anxious about this burgeoning relationship, but when she saw him, all such thoughts disappeared, and he was just..hers. Her guy.

She opened her mouth to say hello, but before the words could leave her mouth…

"Just the person I wanted to see," Zane said enthusiastically, as he brushed past her.

Jo paused in shock. Then she turned back to Vincent. "Did that just happen?" she asked him.

"Ah, Zane blew you off in favor of Fargo?" Vincent said doubtfully. "Um, yes." He looked as perplexed as she felt.

"Sonoluminescence," Zane said, holding out his tablet to Fargo.

"Bubble fusion? No way!" Fargo grabbed the tablet and started reading. "No way, not possible."


	7. Chapter 7

**Scene 7**

Jo stood at the counter and drank half her coffee in two gulps. She was trying to decide how she felt. And then whether how she felt was fair. And then whether she cared whether how she felt was fair. The answers were pissed, no, and no.

"Uh, sonolumin…bubble fusion?" asked Carter. "What's that?"

"I think it's what caused the explosion," Zane responded. "Theoretically, if you use high-intensity sound to agitate bubbles in liquid, you can create thermonuclear fusion. Theoretically. No one's ever done it."

"It's highly unlikely…" started Fargo, reading Zane's notes intently."Well, maybe. Maybe. Wow, that would be so cool!" He looked up at Zane, his eyes wide and excited. "So you think it was a thermonuclear reaction?" he asked.

Zane shrugged, and made an equivocal head motion. "I think it would be pretty amazing if it was. Did you check out the site yet?"

"Wait, wait, wait, what?" Carter demanded. "A thermonuclear reaction? That's like a bomb, right?"

"Well, just a teeny-tiny one." Zane grinned.

"So does this mean that we have bats that can set off nuclear explosions flying around Eureka?" asked Jo, having returned to the table with the remnants of her coffee.

"Oh, hey, Jo," said Zane, as if he was seeing her for the first time.

She gave him a dirty look. "Bats, bombs?" she prompted.

"Uh, probably not. Not unless the bats come near the right liquid, with the right kind of bubbles in it."

"It's not the kind of thing that could happen by accident," Fargo agreed.

"Okay, then back to the plan," she said firmly. "Let's go out to the barn, find out what's happened to Andy, see if we can discover anything more about the explosion, and then figure out how to catch these bats."

"Good plan," Carter agreed hastily. "Taggart, Emily, thanks for your help. Fargo, come with me. Jo, Zane, we'll meet you out there." Quickly, he pulled Fargo to his feet, and hurried him out the door.

"Wait, what?" Fargo protested mildly as Carter moved him along.

"Speaking of thermonuclear explosions…" Carter muttered under his breath.

"You know the address, right? I'll meet you there." Jo smiled sweetly and turned to go.

Zane grabbed her arm. "Are you mad at me?"

"I'm not mad," she said quickly. "Just focused. You're focused on science. I'm focused on doing my job, which right now means catching some bats." She took a last gulp of her coffee, and then expertly pitched the empty cup into the open trash can behind the counter, halfway across the room.

"You're mad," he sighed.

"Not at all," she glared at his hand on her arm. "Do you mind?"

He let go of her arm. "I'm sorry," he apologized.

She blinked at him. That wasn't right. That wasn't right at all.

"You're right. I got distracted by a really cool science puzzle, but I shouldn't have. I'm sorry."

She shook her head in disbelief. Okay, now that really wasn't right.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "You…" she started, only to stumble to a halt, not sure what she wanted to say. Part of her wanted to be dazzled by his apology. Zane didn't apologize—not until after hours of the silent treatment and/or some life-threatening danger. Another part of her wanted to know who the hell he had been dating that had taught him the apologize-fast technique for handling women. Damn it, this Zane knew too much.

But not so much after all—instead of waiting for her to speak, he continued, "Don't go all passive-aggressive on me now."

She smiled. That she knew how to handle. "Would you prefer just aggressive?" she asked gently, head on one side.

"Ah, no," he said carefully. "Not really."

"Good choice. I'll see you at the barn."

Zane watched her leave and sighed.

Taggart eyed him sympathetically. "The apology was good, eh? It might have worked."

Emily was looking perplexed. "You have an interesting relationship," she said politely.

"I'm not sure those are the right words," said a disgruntled Zane.

Emily smiled, and her face lit up. "Oh, they are," she said serenely. "You forget that I saw you together when you were a wolf. Animals can't lie—they're so much easier than people that way."

"Well, but Jo wasn't a wolf," Zane pointed out.

"Yes, but…" Emily shook her head and left it at that.

"She doesn't stay angry long," Taggart offered. "Give her the chance to shoot a few things and she'll cheer right up."

"As long as I don't have to be one of the things she shoots," Zane muttered.


	8. Chapter 8

**Scene 8**

"There's Andy's car." Fargo pointed out the obvious as he and Carter pulled up to Kwon's house.

"So why isn't he answering his phone?" Carter wondered, pulling his phone out of his pocket and hitting Andy's number again as he and Fargo stepped out of the car and headed around to the back of the house.

"Wow, creepy barn." Fargo hadn't seen it before, and the barn was just as ramshackle and run-down in the daylight. A paint job would have done wonders, but most people would also have wanted to fix the hayloft doors, which were hanging at off-kilter angles.

"Yeah, you should try it at night," Carter said absently, listening to the ringing of the phone. The double-ringing of the phone—he could hear it both in his ear, in his phone, and in front of them, in the barn. "Oh, this is not good." He shook his head.

Fargo looked back at him, curiously. "I can hear the phone," he offered, fearlessly walking toward the open door of the barn.

"Wait," snapped Carter.

Fargo stopped, surprised.

Carter pulled his gun. "Let's go for better safe than sorry, okay?"

"Ooooo-kay…" Fargo dragged out the word. "Is the infrasonic sound getting to you? They're just bats! It's just sound!"

"Uh-huh. Tell that to Kwon." Carter put a finger to his lips, and Fargo obediently shut up, although only after a long-suffering sigh. Carter put his back to the wall of the barn, next to the open door, and called out in his most casual voice, "Hey, Andy? You in there?" He waited. No response. With a sigh, he shook his head, and then, with a quick grimace, stepped into the doorway and did a proper police sweep of the area he could see.*

Nothing. He stepped forward slowly, glancing around the barn with quick movements, not letting his eyes rest too long on any one thing. Nothing. No Andy, and no bats.

He walked forward to the area where they'd found Kwon's body and there, at last, was Andy. Fortunately, he wasn't a charred corpse, but he was lying still and silent on the ground. Carter immediately crouched beside him and almost automatically reached to check his pulse—then pulled back. "Fargo!" he called.

"Oh, you mean I'm allowed to come in now?" asked Fargo dryly, entering the barn. "Oh, oops." He joined Carter next to Andy, and immediately started examining the robot deputy. "Hmm, this is odd," he said. He scratched his head, and frowned. "We're going to have to bring him back to GD. There's nothing obviously wrong but…"

"What kind of sound could have done this?" Carter asked urgently.

"Sound?" Fargo looked perplexed.

"Yes," Carter insisted. "What kind of sound could kill a robot? And what would it do to a human being?"

"Ah…God, Carter, you have a bleak imagination. Nothing," said Fargo impatiently. "Well, no. Okay." He stopped and seemed to think for a minute. Slowly, he said, "Cavitation is when bubbles are formed by sound waves or acoustic fields. It can destroy mechanical equipment. It's not like burning or electric shock or the really obvious things that could shut Andy down, but if he was exposed to enough high-frequency sound to cause vibration internally…and the vibrations were strong enough, yeah, okay, sound could have done this."

"And what would equivalent sound do to us?"

"Uh…" Fargo looked blank.

"Fargo, think," said Carter urgently. "There are an unknown number of bats flying around Eureka right now. If they can cause thermonuclear explosions and kill a robot—not to mention scare Jo and Zane, which I would have thought completely impossible—what else can they do?"

"I…" Fargo shook his head. "I don't know. I mean it's sound. Sure, a loud enough sound could damage our hearing. But causing explosions? Damaging machinery? Scaring people? That's all…" he stopped, putting a finger up as if to call for a pause while he considered an idea, and then beginning to nod. "That's all non-lethal weaponry. Well, not the explosion part. But mostly, that's non-lethal weapons. We need to find out who Kwon has been talking to, and what they know."

"There we go," said Carter with relief. "A clear plan. So we just need to find Kwon's phone, or check his phone records."

"Carter?" came the call from the door.

"Hey, Jo," Carter called back. "Come on in. Andy's…out cold. We need to get him back to GD and let Fargo open him up and find out what happened."

"Lovely," drawled Jo sarcastically. "I guess that means we don't get to find out what chemicals are in the barn."

"Not at the moment," said Carter. "Is Zane with you?"

"No," Jo glanced over her shoulder. "He's on his bike, so he should be here soon."

"We think Kwon might have been working with someone in the Non-Lethal Weapons Lab," Carter explained. "I thought Zane might know something."

Jo paused. "You think Zane might have known what was going on all along?" she asked, her voice dangerous.

"No," said Carter hastily. "No, no. No. I just thought he might know if Kwon was friendly with anyone in the null-weps lab."

Jo nodded acknowledgment. She looked down at Andy, and then started looking around the barn.

Fargo looked at Carter, eyebrows raised. Carter grimaced, trying to signal him to say nothing.

"Ah, so, everything going okay with Zane?" Fargo asked tentatively.

Carter gave him a dirty look.

"Absolutely peachy," said Jo, bitterly. "Why do you ask?"

"Ah, no reason," said Fargo weakly. Carter rolled his eyes.

"Hey," said Jo, abruptly. "Did you want Kwon's phone?"

"Yes, if we can find it," Carter eagerly jumped on the change of subject.

"I've got one here," Jo said, bending down and picking up a charred device from the ground. She glanced back to the spot where they'd found Kwon's body. "It couldn't have been on him at the time of the explosion," she said, thoughtfully. "Not and wound up here. But maybe he'd left it on a table or something nearby. Should I be worried about fingerprints?" she glanced at Carter.

He shook his head. "I doubt it. This isn't looking like an outside crime scene to me. More like death by stupid experiment. And at the moment, I care a lot more about who Kwon was calling and what they might know then I do about who exactly is responsible for his death. If we've got killer bats flying around, we need to know that right now."

Jo flipped the phone open, and pressed the caller ID button. "Well, funny thing, that. Guess who's been calling Dr. Kwon?"

Fargo glanced at Carter. This felt like a dangerous question, and he was glad he didn't have to answer it.

"Oh, let me think," said Carter. "Parrish?"

"Bingo!" Jo pointed a finger at Carter.

Fargo heaved an invisible sigh of relief. At least the right answer hadn't been Zane. When Zane had finally figured out that the group of them had experienced an alternate history, Fargo had been almost relieved: at least Jo would stop being so unhappy. Oh, he hadn't exactly been excited about watching the two of them fall in love all over again—bad enough the first time—but an in love Jo was definitely better than a miserable Jo. That said, a miserable Jo just might be better than a furious Jo.

_* I am a damn good Googler, as must be obvious once I tell you that I really know nothing about science whatsoever. But I cannot find the name for that police thing that they do at doorways. If anyone knows it, could you let me know, please? _


	9. Chapter 9

**Scene 9**

Despite the day, Dr. Parrish met them at his lab at GD. He seemed genuinely saddened by Kwon's death, and Jo liked him a little better for it.

He was happy to show them what Kwon had been working on: variously sized speakers capable of projecting high-intensity sounds.

"The big bats use the infrasonic speakers," Dr. Parrish explained, holding up a couple of examples of the differently sized speakers.

"The big bats?" Jo asked. Weren't they all big bats? Or at least bats of unusual size? Admittedly, the thing she'd seen last night had seemed huge, but she'd almost decided that was just an illusion caused by the perspective.

"Well, all the bats are big, relatively speaking. For bats, I mean. But creating infrasonic sound isn't easy: the speakers are bigger and heavier, so those speakers are in the bats with an eight-foot wingspan."

"An eight-foot wingspan?" Fargo choked out. "Those aren't bats, those are monsters. That is not in the project spec!"

"Neither were the weapons, Fargo," Carter pointed out.

Jo added dryly, "I think we can agree that Dr. Kwon had exceeded his project's parameters."

"It was more like a hobby for him," Dr. Parrish said hastily. "I don't think he ever intended that they be used as spy drones. The little bats were what he was working on for the DoD. They use the high-frequency speakers."

"Was he working on sonoluminescence?" Zane asked. "Did he intend the bats to be explosive?" Jo glanced at him and then hastily looked away. He glanced back at her, and a small smile crossed his face.

"I think he was just fascinated by sound waves," Dr. Parrish replied, his face sad. "He was curious about anything that sound might be capable of doing." He sighed, and shook his head, setting the speakers back down on the tabletop.

"So…what are these bats capable of doing?" Carter asked pointedly.

Parrish shrugged. "Are they all gone?" he asked.

"There were none left in the barn," Carter confirmed.

Parrish nodded. "He liked to test them against each other, see how they could avoid each other in flight, and which frequencies worked best for their high-speed mapping. The more of them flying at once, the tougher the challenge was in the enclosed space. But outside the barn, they shouldn't have any problems with flight at all. They'll avoid the EM field, of course, but otherwise, they're probably able to fly indefinitely: their batteries are good for days and they'll use solar power to recharge when they get low. They'll try to avoid capture, of course."

"Why of course?" Jo asked, almost fascinated by this string of bad news.

"Well, they're spy drones," Parrish answered, as if she was stupid. "It's in their programming to avoid capture."

Jo narrowed her eyes at him. Zane stepped up next to her and put his hand on her back. She glanced at him. He was giving Parrish a dirty look. She elbowed him, pushing his hand away, and he let it drop, but turned his gaze back to her. Their eyes met.

She glared.

He smiled.

"I'm really more interested in their weapons at the moment," Carter stepped in, distracting Parrish.

"Quit smiling at me," Jo whispered to Zane fiercely.

"I can't help myself," he whispered back. "You're cute when you're mad."

Jo's eyes widened. Had he really just said that to her? That…that…that sexist, patronizing cliché? Oh, he was just asking for trouble. Her glare deepened in intensity, and his smirk grew.

"Count yourself lucky that I'm not breaking your fingers," she hissed, turning her attention back to Parrish.

Leaning toward her, he breathed into her ear, "The ease with which you say that is almost as hot as it is disturbing."

Jo could not restrain a tiny squeak of pure fury that escaped from her lips, but gritting her teeth, she focused resolutely on Parrish. She was not going to pay attention to Zane, she was not. He could forget about her, fine, she could forget about him. And Parrish was talking about sound, with a certain unhealthy enthusiasm, detailing its many possible uses as a weapon.

"Gross!" Fargo looked revolted. "Vibrating eyeballs? That's…that's really unpleasant."

"But specifically, Dr. Parrish, what are these bats capable of?" Carter pushed at the important point again.

Parrish shrugged. "I don't know," he admitted. "It depends what frequencies they're using and Kwon was continually experimenting with those."

Carter sighed. "That's not real useful. All right, let's focus on how to capture them. Any ideas there?"

Parrish shrugged again. "Nets, I suppose."

"Let's see what the internet suggests." Fargo turned to one of the nearby computers, and started typing. "Oh, look. Bats are notoriously difficult to catch. That's not helpful. Tennis rackets? Towels? Well, at least we don't have to worry about rabies." He looked up at Parrish, eyes narrowed. "Kwon wasn't experimenting with biological weapons, was he? Because I'm going to be really annoyed if these bats are rabies carriers."

"That wouldn't exactly be non-lethal," Parrish said disdainfully, "so I wouldn't know." In response to Fargo's glare and Carter's scowl, he reluctantly added, "I doubt it, though."

"Oh, this is bad," Fargo muttered, as he continued to read. "Bat's echolocation abilities let them know what's all around them, which is why they're so hard to trap. In an enclosed space, you can drop something on top of one to catch it, but that's going to be tough to do outside. I wonder if we can build some kind of a sonic trap that would work."

"Robot bats won't be motivated by food, so we can't bait a trap for them," Carter thought out loud.

"Can't we just shoot them?" asked Jo, a little plaintively. She so wanted to shoot something. Really, anything would be good.

"Easier said than done, Jo," Carter pointed out. "Even a sharpshooter has to be able to get within range. We'd need a flying sharpshooter."

"How about Martha?" Zane suggested.

Jo glanced at him. Actually, that was a good idea. How annoying.

"No, no," said Fargo impatiently. "We need to capture them. The DoD will not like it if we destroy the entire project. This is bad enough."

"Before we can do anything, we're going to need to find them." Zane crossed to one of the lab's computers, and started typing without bothering to sit.

Fargo sighed, scrolling through information online. "Well, since we can't drop towels on them, we're going to have to figure out some way to use nets," he muttered.

Carter's phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and glanced at the caller ID, then answered. "Henry, great. Did you have a chance to finish the DNA test?"

"Yes, but…" Henry started, his voice tinny but discernable to the people standing next to Carter.

"Can you confirm that our pile of ash was Dr. Kwon?"

"Yes, but…"

"Ah, good. I mean, not good for Kwon, but at least we can be sure. What about cause of death? Is there anything—"

"Carter, I'm not calling about Kwon," Henry finally interrupted, his voice exasperated. "We've got bigger problems right now. There's mass panic on Main Street. People screaming and running, glass shattering, and bats. Really, really big bats."


	10. Chapter 10

**Scene 10**

"Oooo-kay. Martha suddenly seems like a better idea." Fargo pushed back from the computer and stood up. "Let's get upstairs and see what's happening."

Within minutes, the entire group was gathered in Section 1, watching the giant monitors. Fargo was playing with the controls, getting the cameras to zoom in on the town. Standing in the back, Jo couldn't help remembering the day she'd watched Larry's rocket blow up her house from this very room. Losing her house and all of her belongings should have made it one of the worst days of her life.

And it was, of course. But…she'd also saved Zane from going to prison, and he had called her Jo-jo and smiled at her in that mischievous way he had. Remembering it now, she couldn't stop a reluctant smile from tugging at her lips. What had he said? "You hate that? You hate that…" and she'd known then that he'd call her Jo-jo again just for the pleasure of teasing her. And just as it had made her smile then, it was making her smile now.

She glanced at him. He was the most annoying person she'd ever known, in any universe. And she was helplessly, hopelessly, madly in love with him. She looked away as soon as he turned his head to look at her, but not quite quickly enough. He saw that she'd been smiling and he was smart enough to know that meant she was relenting. He looked down but his own lips were also curving in a smile.

"I'm going to get down there and try to get people off the streets, see if I can calm things down." Carter took one last look at the monitor, shaking his head, and then hurried out of the room.

"Jo, earth to Jo." Fargo impatiently pulled Jo out of her reverie. "Let's get Martha out there. I don't think we have time to come up with a better solution."

Jo nodded, grabbing a handheld and quickly texting instructions to Martha. She typed the last digits of her security code—the numbers that authorized Martha to follow her instructions—and then glanced at Zane, who had been watching her. "If Martha starts behaving oddly, I'll know who to blame," she said, but the words weren't delivered with any animosity.

He shrugged. "Hacker instinct," he said, tacitly admitting that he'd caught her password. "I promise I won't use my illicitly-gained knowledge."

"I know you won't." Jo looked away. She'd read the files. This Zane had done a lot of stupid pranks. And her own alter-ego had seemed to delight in over-reacting. She didn't—couldn't—truly know what had been going on, since she hadn't been here. But the part of her that instinctively understood people and their dynamics was pretty sure that she and Zane been trapped in a dysfunctional attention cycle, where he acted like an ass because negative attention was better than no attention, and she over-reacted, because admitting her attraction to a rebel was impossible. There was no way that she was falling into that trap again. Besides, she'd given him a perpetual free pass by reason of insanity. That meant that even if he did mess with Martha, she'd find a way to fix it.

"Is it me you trust or him?" His eyes were dark, his voice annoyed.

Jo glanced back at him. _Oh. Now where did that come from?_ She frowned.

"There we go!" Fargo's voice was exultant.

Everyone's eyes turned towards the monitors. The dull black metal body of the drone was skimming through the air, entering the chaos above Main Street. Jo noticed that Carter had made it there first, and was exiting his parked car at the same moment. He must have broken every speed limit in the state.

The bats' bodies were small, their wings like giant kites stretched out to either side. But they ranged in size from biggish for a bat—about three feet across—to truly gigantic. Jo tried to count. It looked to her as if there were four of the gigantic bats, perhaps half a dozen that were mid-sized, and another dozen or so that were smallish. That wasn't actually that many, but seeing them all swarming and circling together made it seem like more.

A flash of blue light and a bat was flailing in the air, one wing damaged. A second flash and the bat was dropping out of the sky like a dirty brown rag. A gigantic dirty brown rag.

Martha circled around, aiming at a second of the giant bats. One, two, three shots, and it too was down, out of the sky, landing on a parked car and then sliding off and down to the street, lying still and dead.

For the first few minutes, Martha had unrelenting success. Bat after bat dropped out of the sky. But the little bats were more maneuverable than the big ones. Martha fired—and missed, the shot flaring into the side of a building and sending brick chips flying.

"Whoa, that's not good," Fargo was chewing his fingernails as he watched the monitors.

"Come on, Martha," Jo murmured. "You can do it."

The bats braked, separated, fluttered, stopped, shot up and then down. Martha couldn't keep up with their angling. She spun again, shot again, missed again.

Fargo hissed as her shot took out a streetlight.

"This isn't working," Jo was frowning, trying to calculate the angles of the shots Martha was taking. She was behind the bats, and that wasn't working. She needed to be above the bats. But Martha couldn't fire in a downward direction unless she got high enough to angle herself downward—and given how fast she flew, that was way too high to get a solid shot at a target that small.

Martha had taken out the big bats—those were the easy ones. She'd gotten most of the mid-sized bats. But the little ones were too fast and too agile. She shot, again and again and again.

"Uh-oh," muttered Zane.

"What?" Jo heard his mutter.

"Does she have that emotional attachment patch? I think she's getting frustrated."

Martha fired. And fired again. Automatically, Jo calculated the shot—and knew immediately that Zane was right. Martha was taking shots with no chance of success because she was annoyed.

"We need to pull her back," Jo snapped. Immediately, she got on the handheld and started typing, and then, frustrated, used the telephone function instead. "Come back to GD, Martha," she ordered.

Martha fired off another shot. Again, it went wild, this time hitting a tree.

"Martha, listen to me. Come back to GD." Jo was being firm with the drone.

"There's still half a dozen bats out there," Fargo protested. "We don't know what they can do."

"No, but we do know what Martha can do," Zane was watching the monitors. He cringed as another shot missed a bat, the blue fire smashing through a store window.

Almost all the people were off the street, but Carter was still out there, running from one straggler to the next.

"We have to stop the bats," Fargo insisted.

"Martha, come back to GD," Jo ordered again.

Martha spun, twirled, took another shot. A little bat hung in front of her, almost as if it was taunting her, and she fired, fired, fired again, just as the bat dropped below her, and then slid behind her. The shots took out Carter's jeep in a beautiful flare of blue light that subsided to leave behind only another wreck of a car.

"Oh, not again," moaned Fargo. "His car insurance is practically a line item in the budget."

"Martha, I know you're annoyed," Jo started trying to talk the drone down, using her most soothing voice. "It's not your fault. Those bats use echolocation. They can tell when you're behind them. You can't shoot straight down and that's what needed here. So it's not your fault and you need to calm down and come home to GD. You did a great job, truly great, you got the big guys. Now you need to come home…"

Jo could tell from the drone's body language on the screen when she'd succeeded. Martha slowed, then stopped, stood still for a moment, then started rising. Jo took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"How are we going to stop the last bats?" Fargo asked. "From the way they're breaking glass, it's obvious they're still dangerous."

"We need to be able to attack them from above." As Martha headed back toward GD, away from Main Street, Jo closed her phone and gazed at the screen.

"We need to drop towels on them," Fargo said gloomily. "The internet says that's the way to catch them."

Jo bit her lip, thinking hard. She turned to Zane. "Do you still have that beanbag gun?"

Zane knew exactly what she was talking about: the testing gun in Dr. Parrish's lab. "Down in the nullwep lab, yeah."

"That blanket you had last night—if we fired one of those out of the beanbag gun, would it open?"

Zane thought for a minute. "You have to shake it, but being shot out of a gun—especially a gun not designed for that kind of bullet…yeah, that ought to work. It should cycle enough to open."

Jo was beginning to smile. "Last question—the SkyCruiser. Working?"

Zane grinned back at her. "Yep."

"You get the cruiser, I'll get the gun and the ammo. Let's go hunt some bats!"


	11. Chapter 11

**Scene 11**

Jo met Zane by the garage door. She was examining the beanbag gun as she walked, cracking it open to see how the small, square blankets could slide inside, peering through the target finder.

"A modified Arwen 37?" she said by way of greeting. "Crappy range, right? About six meters? We're going to need to get pretty close. And only five rounds. I'll probably need to reload. I hope these blankets don't jam it. Nice laser scope, though. Did you add that?"

He grinned at her. "I made some tweaks," he admitted. "I think you'll like it."

"It's a gun, and I get to shoot things. What's not to like?" she grinned back at him. "You ready to go?"

He gestured with one hand to the re-built Skycruiser, a matte-black flying wave-runner, sleek and powerful. "All set," he said. "But you need a helmet."

"Don't have one." Jo slung one leg over the back of the Skycruiser, and checked that she could reach the pouch of extra ammo blankets comfortably.

"There's bound to be another helmet here somewhere," Zane protested. "We'll find one."

"Yeah, down with the body armor, there are plenty. But we don't have time." She shook her head. "If we lose these bats now, we have no idea how much damage they'll be able to do before we find them again. We have to go while we have the chance."

"You take this helmet, then."

"We don't have time to argue about this. And I can't aim with that on. Come on, Zane, we need to move. Put the helmet on and drive."

He paused, and she grinned at him. "Lupo…" he started.

"Not the time, Donovan," she said. "Drive, or I'll leave without you. And it's gonna be really tough to shoot bats and drive at the same time."

He sighed, and slipping the helmet on, took his seat at the front of the Skycruiser. Jo slid closer to him on the seat, so that her legs were touching his. She tightened one arm around his waist briefly, before realizing that holding on was not going to work. "I'm not going to be able to hold on to you and shoot at the same time," she said, leaning back, and pulling the modified gun up to see how she could comfortably aim. "Drive carefully."

"This is insane, Jo," Zane shook his head as he kicked the Skycruiser on. With a roar of sound, they took off, zooming into the air. The wind rushed past, and instinctively Jo leaned forward, clutching at Zane's back with one hand. Wow, it was cold. She was wearing her black leather jacket and her scarf, but she glanced down at her hands, one holding the gun across her lap, the other on Zane's back, and wished briefly for gloves. The ground was moving past in a blur of green and gray, and she looked up, leaning to see over Zane's shoulder.

"Careful," he shouted back at her as the Skycruiser tilted, and he pulled it straight. "It's not as stable as a watercraft. It's more like a motorcycle, lean too far and you could tip us."

With the intensity of the wind, Jo only caught about two words in three, but it was enough to get the message across—or maybe the tilt alone had been enough. Ooh, this was going to be fun. How the hell was she going to make this work? Shooting at a moving target from a moving vehicle, with Zane's back blocking her line of sight? Not to mention that one false move would send them plummeting to the ground?

And damn it, they should have figured out some better way of keeping in touch with Fargo. They'd left him working on a way to track the bats but between the rush of the wind and the noise of the Skycruiser, even her Bluetooth earpiece wasn't going to make it easy to hear from him.

They were almost at the edge of town. Wow, the Skycruiser was fast. Almost involuntarily, Jo's lips stretched in a grin. Okay, so maybe this was crazy…but it sure was fun. But she still had the problem of aiming. They were close to the bats, and she needed to be able to see them. She stroked the gun in her lap thoughtfully, and then slung it over her shoulder. Best bet…she was facing the wrong way.

Leaning forward, she shouted into Zane's ear. "Get ahead and above any bats you see, so that I'm firing down on them and behind us."

"Got it," he shouted back confirmation, still focused on keeping the SkyCruiser steady.

"I'm turning around. Keep me safe!"

"What? Wait, what?" Zane dared a glance back over his shoulder.

"Face forward," she ordered him, thumping his back. "I'm turning around."

Taking a deep breath, she paused, said a quick prayer, and then swiveled, pulling her right leg over the back of the Skycruiser so that for one terrifying moment she was perched sidesaddle, high in the sky, nothing between her and the ground but thirty feet of empty air. Then she did she same with her left leg, so that she was again straddling the machine, but this time facing backwards.

The Skycruiser wobbled precariously, and Zane swore, struggling to keep it flying smoothly. But it quickly straightened out again. "Nice work," she shouted, leaning against him and laughing. This was much better. She had the strength of his back against her, a warm support. And she could see everything, the entire spread of Eureka beneath them.

There! It was a bat, swooping down Main Street. Jo lifted the bean bag gun, looked through the laser scope and dropped into the place she went when she was shooting. Suddenly, her hands weren't cold. The wind wasn't harsh. The Skycruiser wasn't loud. The world was a still and perfect place and the only things that existed were the bat, the bullet in the gun, and the space between the two.

Now.

Jo fired.

The square of blanket shot out from the gun and, just as Jo had anticipated, started spinning in the air, expanding with every spin. Gravity started pulling it down almost immediately, but they were far enough above the bat that the blanket was over the brown body before its weight stopped its forward movement. But then it was falling and the bat was falling with it and finally it was on the ground, a red-and-white checked blotch with a struggling lump underneath it.

Jo leaned away from Zane, trying to see over the back of the cruiser. Was someone coming to collect the bat or would it be able escape from the blanket? Ah, there was Taggart, running into the street with one of his smaller animal cages.

"Go higher," she shouted to Zane, twisting her head so that her voice was as close to his ear as possible. He nodded and pulled the Skycruiser's steering bar so that its nose aimed up.

Oops. Jo started to slide, gravity having its way with her, just as it had with the blanket. She couldn't use her hands to hang on without letting go of the gun, so hastily she clenched her legs around the seat, and pushed with her feet against the base, trying to stop her momentum. She yelped involuntarily-ooh, but it was a long way down. Zane glanced back, and realizing what was happening, straightened the Skycruiser out, slowing it down. Jo sighed with relief, wiggling her way back up the seat.

There, another bat. No, two of them, flying close together. Jo aimed, fired, and watched the blanket pull the bats out of the sky. One was too close to the edge of the cloth and managed to wiggle out from under the blanket before it landed, so Jo took another shot.

That time the blanket was blue-and-white checks, and it landed on the bat, but also on the statue of Archimedes. The Skycruiser blew past but Jo stretched to see if Taggart would capture the bat before it could escape.

Again, the Skycruiser tilted. "Careful," Zane shouted. Jo leaned back quickly, restoring their balance. She couldn't see if Taggart had managed to capture the bat, but she saw Carter running down the street, so maybe Carter would get it.

Jo scanned the sky, trying to see the other bats. She thought that there were at least three more left to find, and—there they were, all three of them, near the Sheriff's office. Jo lifted the gun and fired, one down. Again, and there went a second. She reloaded, slipping the squares of blanket into the gun with calm efficiency. One more, unless…drat, one had escaped.

Quickly, she fired two shots in succession, the blankets spiraling through the air and spreading out. Main Street was looking like Florida during a freeze, blankets randomly draped across the street, as if protecting precious plants from the cold. Well, or it would, if it weren't for the broken glass, the burnt-out wreck of a jeep, the smashed streetlight, the bat bodies with spread out wings…maybe it was more like Florida during a natural disaster.

Zane turned the Skycruiser around and cruised slowly down the roofs of Main Street again. Carter and Taggart and Emily were out on the street, putting the last bats in cages. Vincent was standing at the doorway of Café Diem, shaking his head at the mess. People were beginning to re-emerge from storefronts, and cluster on street corners, pointing out the damage and talking excitedly.

A crackle in Jo's ear was Fargo's voice. It sounded as if he was saying that they'd gotten them all.

"I think we're good," Jo shouted. "Take us down."

Zane lowered the Skycruiser to the ground in a slow spiral, landing in front of Café Diem, and turning the power off. In the sudden silence, Jo laughed with joy. "That was awesome," she said, swinging her leg over the side of the Skycruiser so that she was perched on its back as if it was a bench, facing the restaurant.

Zane jumped off the Skycruiser, pulling his helmet off, and turning to face her. "That was not awesome," he said in disbelief. "That was terrifying. Are you insane? Switching positions in mid-air? Why didn't you just tell me to stop for a minute? Do you know what a fall from that high up could have done to you? And did you nearly slide off the back once?"

Jo grinned at him. Jumping off the seat, she launched herself into his arms. He stumbled backward a step or two, dropping the helmet, before catching himself and her. "Jo," he started to protest, before she took his mouth with hers, shutting him up. One hand ran up through his hair, while the other caressed his cheek as she kissed him hungrily, all the passion and desire she felt flowing through her mouth.

"Oh, well, if you're going to be that way about it," he mumbled through kisses, pulling her closer.


	12. Chapter 12

**Scene 12**

Jo stood in the dojo of her new house, gazing out the French doors that led to a small patio and an enclosed backyard. She'd gotten the call from her contractor that afternoon: despite the chaos that had been Eureka for the last few hours, the builders—who had been on permanent overtime since the fossil fiasco—were ready for her to come approve the final details.

She'd happily signed the forms, and sent Dr. Zimmer on her way. The house was all she'd imagined it would be: the shooting range in the basement, the dojo, the simple but efficient kitchen, the high-tech bathroom, the windows in the upstairs bedroom that would let her wake to morning light. But it was empty. Of course she had known that finishing the house wouldn't mean that all of her possessions miraculously reappeared. But apparently she'd somehow subconsciously thought that when she got her house back, she'd get her home back. And…not so much. This was nice, sure. But it wasn't home.

"Hey." The husky voice was tentative.

Jo swiveled, hand automatically reaching for her gun. "Oh. Hey." She relaxed. It was just Zane. The edgy defensiveness that she felt in what seemed like a strange place—even though it was her house—dropped.

"Did you just almost shoot me?"

She shrugged. "Sorry," she said, no apology in her voice as she turned back to the non-existent garden. "You startled me."

"Did you send as many mixed messages to him, too?" This time Zane's voice was purely disgruntled.

Jo turned again. "Sorry," she repeated, this time genuinely amused. "And, ah, no, probably not. It was a lot less complicated."

Zane had been hovering in the doorway, but took a couple steps into the room at her words. "You kissed me on Main Street," he complained. "In full view of Vincent and the rest of the town. How can it still be complicated?"

Jo chuckled. "It's not. Not really." Turning away from the doors, she crossed to where he stood and reached up to drop a casual kiss on his lips. "I don't have any food here," she said as she slipped past him and into the kitchen, "But we can go out and get something if you like."

He held up a bag. "It's not nearly as elaborate as last night's picnic. But I've got two turkey sandwiches and…" he opened the bag and pulled out a container, "…a pint of butter pecan ice cream."

Jo stopped. She turned. "Butter pecan?"

"Yeah." Zane looked puzzled. "You said you liked it?"

Jo took a deep breath. And then pressed her hands over her eyes. She would not cry. She would not. "You brought butter pecan ice cream?" she asked, her voice strangled.

"You said you liked it," Zane insisted.

She shook her head. And then nodded. "Yeah, I did. But I was kidding. Sorry."

"Damn it, Jo. This…" Zane dropped the bag and the ice cream container on the kitchen counter, and stuffed his hands in his pants pockets. He shook his head. "Do you remember when we met?"

She looked at him and he sighed. "Oh, right. No way to know whether it was the same. Well, in this universe, I was asleep in the jail cell in the sheriff's office. I woke up and you were sitting at the desk, and you were…I don't even remember, messing with a gun or something. But I thought you were a dream. You were so incredibly, ridiculously out of place. It wasn't the first time I'd woken up in jail, not even close. But I'd never woken up to someone so beautiful. I wanted you from the first moment I saw you."

He stepped closer to her and slid one finger under the chain around her neck, pulling out the ring. "When I realized that in some other universe, I'd actually been that lucky, all I thought was that if I could do it once, I could do it again. I was stupid to think it'd be that easy. I don't…I'm not him. I can't be him. I don't know the things he knew, I don't know how he made this work. And whatever the differences are between us, between the Zane you loved and me, I don't think I can…"

Jo was shaking her head, and finally she reached up and covered his mouth with her hand. "Stop," she ordered.

He fell silent, but his eyes, as he looked at her, were sad.

She let her hand drop from his mouth to his chest, and she dropped her eyes to follow it as she spoke, unable to meet his. "He proposed to me. And I froze. I didn't say yes. I didn't say 'about time, what have you been waiting for?'" She let her hand drop to the bottom of his t-shirt and then slide up and under it, so that she was touching his warm skin. "I wasn't sure. And I told you once already why I wasn't sure. Why I didn't think we fit." She raised her eyes to meet his, her own as solemn, and let her hand slide around to his back.

"I loved him," she said. "I did. I feel disloyal for every word that's coming out of my mouth right now. But here's the truth: he made me feel stupid, and you don't. His arrogance drove me crazy and you…you're confident, but you're not arrogant the same way. He always knew he was right and you—you're willing to maybe think somebody else has a point of view, even if they're wrong. He—he would never have brought me butter pecan ice cream. Which is okay, since I don't really like it, but…do you get it?" she finished plaintively.

"Um, I think maybe," Zane was starting to smile, the sadness in his eyes disappearing. He bent his head to hers and kissed his way along her cheek to her ear, where he whispered, "Virtuous is over-rated?"

She laughed weakly, and said, "I told you that before, too—there is no universe in which you are virtuous." She was pulling at his clothes as she spoke, pushing his jacket off his shoulders, tugging at his t-shirt to draw it over his head, pulling at the top of his jeans to unfasten the buttons.

"Did you close the door?" she mumbled into his mouth.

"Yep," he whispered back as he worked to divest her of her clothes. "Oh, god, do you always wear black lace?"

"Nope," she shook her head breathlessly, as she stepped out of her pants and kicked off her shoes. "I've got some incredible red silk that you're going to love. It's what I was wearing the day my house blew up." She laughed as he groaned. "We have no furniture," she warned him.

"Furniture is over-rated," he murmured, lifting her onto the kitchen counter.

"Beds are nice," she whispered, wrapping her legs around him and pulling him closer. "We'll get one tomorrow."

He nodded agreement as he kissed his way down her neck. And then he stopped. Carefully, he picked up the chain, and unfastened the clasp. It took him a minute, being a typical finicky chain. Jo whimpered in protest: she wanted him to be touching her instead. She bit him gently. "Stop that and kiss me," she ordered.

"In a minute." He finally managed to get the clasp open and shook the ring off the chain, letting it drop into his hand. He looked at it. "I don't know how I feel about it," he admitted. "Is it his ring or is it mine?"

Jo looked at it. "It's your grandmother's," she said. "Not his, not yours, just hers."

Zane smiled. "That works." He picked up her hand and slid it onto her finger. "And now yours."

She looked at him, wide-eyed. "I—are you…?"

"Yes," he said. "I will marry you, thank you so much for asking." He kissed her again, his tongue exploring her mouth thoroughly, building the heat between them, until she pulled back, laughing but protesting.

"Zane, are you…do you…but you—"

"Yes, I am sure, and I do know, and you know, too, Jo-jo. We're meant to be, in this universe or any universe." His hands were stroking, touching, caressing, exploring every inch of her body as if it were already his.

"I—"she melted under his kiss, finally emerging enough to say, "Long engagement?"

"Okay," he agreed, dropping little nibbling kisses along her cheek. "But if we're having seven kids, we should get started soon."

"What?" Jo pulled back. "We are not having seven kids! Three is plenty."

He grinned. "Okay, three it is."

Eyes narrowed, she asked, "You were always thinking three, weren't you?"

He was smart enough not to answer, just bent back to her mouth and kept kissing her. Smiling, Jo kissed him back and knew that she was home.


End file.
